You might be forgiven for thinking that the issue was resolved way back in 1954 when the US Supreme Court ruled in the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case.

Justices decided that it was unconstitutional to have substandard schools for black and minority students while also maintaining pristine schools for white children, as was the practice in most parts of the country at the time.

They struck down the previous justification of “separate but equal” because when you have separate schools, they are rarely equal.

You might think that’s just common sense. When you have schools just for blacks and schools just for whites, the resources aren’t going to be divided fairly or evenly. One group will always get the upper hand. Better to mix the two groups so it’s harder to select against one or the other.

And this is true of almost every cultural division you can think of: race, gender, class, religion, etc. The only way to protect everyone is to make it harder to hurt one group without hurting them all.

Take vouchers – allocating tax dollars to parents so they could “choose” to send their kids to private schools that won’t accept minorities – they tried it.

Or charters – setting up schools that are privately run but publicly funded so parents can “choose” to send their kids to schools allowed to discriminate against minorities during enrollment – they tried it.

And they’re still trying it and getting away with it.

It took decades for Brown v. Board to truly be enforced nationwide, and even after it became unavoidable, the fight to undermine it never truly died.

It dealt with Detroit’s plan to integrate students by busing them from the inner city to the suburbs. The court ruled that such a plan was unconstitutional, because black students only had the right to attend integrated schools WITHIN THEIR OWN SCHOOL DISTRICT. If few white people lived there, well oh well.

And thus, de facto segregation was born.

If black and white people didn’t live together in the same neighborhoods – and they rarely do – then they wouldn’t be forced to go to school together. Forget that banks and insurance companies often refuse or limit loans, mortgages, and insurance to people of color for properties within specific geographical areas – a practice known as red lining. There was nothing municipal or school officials from minority jurisdictions could do to force integration across these artificial borders.

Between1991 and 1995, the Court made matters even worse in three additional rulings. Justices decided that integration was merely a temporary federal policy and once the imbalance was righted, school districts should be released from any desegregation orders.

The results can be seen in almost every traditional public school in the country. There are rich schools and poor schools. There are black schools and white schools. And our federal and state education policies take advantage of the separation making sure that privileged schools get the lions share of resources while the others have to make do with less.

We need to value all children, not just those who resemble us racially, socially and/or economically.

That’s why school segregation is so bad.

It divides our children into discrete groups. It sets up the social structure and ensures the privileged will continue to be prized and the underprivileged will continue to be devalued. It teaches children to trust those like themselves and to distrust those who are different.

School segregation is the mother of racism and prejudice. And until we, adults, have the courage to tackle it, the next generation will grow up just like us – selfish, racist and blind.

27 thoughts on “Where Did All The Integrated Schools Go? Why Segregation is Still Bad”

“And until we, adults, have the courage to tackle it, the next generation will grow up just like us – selfish, racist and blind.”

I want to suggest changing “us” to “too many Americans” because “us” indicates all Americans are selfish, racist and blind, and I think those that support Trump are stupid, selfish, racist, easy to manipulate fools, and are blind. Let’s not forget that it was the Electoral College and not the popular vote that put Trump in the White House and extreme gerrymandering in GOP-dominated voter suppressed states and huge sums of money from ALEC and the Koch brothers that got a lot of members of Congress and some governors elected caused the GOP majority in both Houses of Congress.

The evidence from polls suggests that about 35-percent of the American people, that are mostly white, are uneducated, and ae proud like Trump that they do not read books, are selfish, racist and blind. And let’s add ignorant to that list.

In my little piece of heaven, Greenville, SC, our Charter Schools are public schools. Greenville is a beacon of light in an otherwise dismal landscape that is education in SC.
While parents have more say so and day to day involvement, students attend via a lottery system which hopefully makes our charter system less segregated. That being said, great post, one I agree with totally.

When it came time to move, I investigated the public school stats in the area we were moving to and visited the schools. Any all white schools were immediately rejected (my kids are brown, and it sucks being the token anything), but all mixed schools had lower scores in SATs, graduation, college attendance etc. I was actually okay with this, because if when I crunched the numbers differently, looking at how native speakers of English did with graduation and college attendance, I found that the scores were quite different than if I included all the students (non native speakers and mentally challenged). So if a school chooses to educate a diverse population, scores will of course be affected–but that doesn’t mean MY children’s education would suffer. My kids are, in fact, doing great. Their personal scores are in top percentile in the state, and they also are friends with a diverse population racially, economically, religiously, and neurologically. More parents (white parents) need to be brave enough to buck the trend of believing a school’s raw scores translates to their individual child’s scores. And it has been my professorial friends’ experiences that kids who went to all-white, super-score schools, don’t necessarily do better in college than their peers who went to non-descript public schools. In fact, they often do worse, because they never had to struggle or work outside their comfort zone.

Great post – I wish many, many more people felt the same passion that you do about this issue. To Michelle’s point about white parents, there’s an organization that does great work on this- i.e., talking with white parents about fears/obstacles to school integration and encouraging them to opt in to integrated schools. In fact, the org’s name is Integrated Schools (https://integratedschools.org/). If you’re not already familiar, I highly recommend checking them out.

Reblogged this on BLOGGYWOCKY and commented:
This article is well worth reading.
Thank you, Steven Singer.
It is going to be hugely difficult to change this mind-set. We have been trying to move away from racism for a very, very long time.
The only thing that may ultimately change this is the shifting demographics. Eventually, white people will be in the minority in this country, and if the citizens of color vote in enough numbers, things will change.

But not in every state. The racists will do all they can to hold on to a majority of white voters in enough states to win the White House. That’s why the GOP is working so hard in the states they already dominate to make it difficult for minorities to vote.

In addition, what good will it do if there are a majority of minority voters but whites still control the two major parties and the selection of candidates that we get to vote for.

[…] after the U.S. Supreme court’s decision in Brown v Board of Education in 1954. In fact, segregation seems to be getting worse! Steven Singer, on his GADFLYONTHEWALLBLOG, surveys what’s happened over the past 60+ […]

[…] Our local district serves a mostly high poverty population. More than half of the students are minorities. The facilities aren’t as up to date as you’ll find in richer neighborhoods. Class sizes are too large. But we decided that being a part of the community school was important, and much of what my child has learned there simply isn’t taught at schools where everyone is the same. […]

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[…] look to me to exert some kind of supernatural teacher magic. I am not a white savior who can make school segregation, racism and prejudice disappear. I try to treat every student fairly, but my actions can’t undo […]

[…] to me to exert some kind of supernatural teacher magic. I am not a white savior who can make school segregation, racism and prejudice disappear. I try to treat every student fairly, but my actions can’t undo […]

[…] schools are less segregated today than they were before Brown v. Board. The courts have let us down in supporting this Supreme Court decision, instead permitting an awful lot of regression in some districts. But even at the most resegregated […]

[…] And what’s worse than that is we just finished two terms under our first African American President – and HE didn’t care. Barack Obama didn’t make desegregation a priority. In fact, he supported legislation to make it wo…. […]

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